US President Donald Trump tweeted on Wednesday that Google is biased and has rigged its results to show "bad" stories when users search for "Trump news." The Trump administration said they will explore regulating Google.
"Google search results for 'Trump News' shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media," the president said Tuesday on Twitter.
He claimed that "Google & others are suppressing voices of Conservatives."
Trump claims that Google's actions could be "illegal". He said the situation would be addressed but did not specify what action would be taken.
Later in the day, the President reiterated his claims to reporters. Trump, without evidence, accused Google of "taking advantage of a lot of people," the CNN reported. Trump said the tech companies—Facebook, Twitter and Google—are "treading on very, very troubled territory and they have to be careful."
Trump’s economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, told reporters that the White House was “taking a look” at Google, saying the administration would do “some investigation and some analysis,” without providing further details.
The call for regulation might affect free speech protection. In the US itself it could lead to violation of the First Amendment, lawmakers said.
Google has denied the allegation and said that the search results are based on algorithms and are not politcally biased.
Google uses automated programs called spiders or crawlers, just like most search engines. Also like other search engines, Google has a large index of keywords and where those words can be found, according to howstuffworks.com. A user's geographic locatin and browsing history also impacts the search results.